The Therapeutic Benefit of Slowing Down
The missing piece in your fertility journey might just be doing absolutely nothing.
Here’s a narrative that I hear far too often: “I’m doing everything I’ve ever been told to do for my health: eating whole foods, weight training, drinking mineralized water, prioritizing sleep, using xyz biohacking tools, and I still feel like garbage.”
My usual curiosity to this is, “When do you give yourself time to sit and stare at the ceiling?”
And, you guessed it, nine times out of ten the response is a nervous huff or giggle, with a shake of the head indicating that no such thing exists in her routine.
The plight of the modern woman is this: we’re inundated, positively overwhelmed, with “information” about what we should eat, how we should behave, what we should look like, what we should do to optimize our existence, what kinds of relationships we should have, whether we should be a stay at home mom or have a career or juggle both, and you BET we’re told that we should be doing everything, all at once, until the end of time.
Did reading that paragraph exhaust you? That was the intention. Take that and multiply it by a thousand—this is the strain that your nervous system feels when you’re actually doing everything that you think you should be doing.
Regardless of why you are doing so much, the key here is to slow down. We biologically need to enter “rest and digest” mode (governed by the parasympathetic nervous system) in order to allow the body to heal, repair, and optimize. We as humans simply cannot heal when we’re constantly “doing”, because activity is not a parasympathetic input.
If this sounds impossible to you, start small with minor adjustments that feel safe: leave your phone on the counter (or put it on airplane mode) when you go for a walk (“unplugged”, if you will), take 5-10 minutes after a meal to digest instead of immediately moving onto the next task, exist in silence instead of constantly listening to an audiobook or podcast. Eventually, it’ll start to feel good enough that you’ll want to prioritize downtime.
Remember that we always follow physiology—if we’re pushing and pushing and not getting anywhere, that’s a sign from your internal wisdom that it’s time to slow down.
Disclaimer: *Remember that none of this is medical advice. This blog post is intended for educational and editorial purposes only. Always discuss with your own doctor any changes that may affect your health.*